Russian pact will let India build two major reactors
India is reviving an agreement with old ally Russia for the building of two civilian nuclear plants, six weeks after the US, Japan and the European Union imposed economic sanctions against it for conducting five underground nuclear tests and becoming the world's sixth nuclear weapons state.
Officials in New Delhi yesterday said Russia's Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov and Dr R. Chidambaram, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and one of the scientists behind last month's nuclear tests, would sign the agreement on June 22.
The two power plants, of 1000 megawatts each, would be built at a cost of US$26 billion (HK$201 billion) at Kudankulam in southern Tamil Nadu state.
Analysts said that as the West punished New Delhi for its nuclear tests, the civilian nuclear power plant deal would reduce India's isolation.
In the midst of international condemnation over India's nuclear tests, Moscow has been subtly supportive of New Delhi, in an extension of the close diplomatic and military ties which existed between the two during the Cold War years.
The contract for the two nuclear plants was reached with the former Soviet Union but lapsed after its break-up in 1991.
Attempts to revive it were stymied by the United States, but finally pushed through earlier this year.
According to the revised proposals, Russia would supply most of the critical components while engineers from India's state-owned Nuclear Power Corp would erect the plants.
Enriched uranium would be supplied by Moscow while India would reprocess the spent fuel.
